Consider this post to be a soft indoctrination into the 2013 fantasy baseball season...as I need time to ease into the process of crafting positional rankings and developing theories for sound drafting.

A spring-training period for couch-based eggheads, if you will.

After all, it's hard to get truly serious about fantasy baseball before Super Bowl Sunday—or even the Pro Bowl. But we're getting very close to pitchers and catchers reporting (life is good).

Here's a dry run of draft expectations when holding the No. 6 pick in a 12-team mixed roto league, specifically working off the Average Draft Position report from our friends at Mock Draft Central.

My only strategy, aside from getting value with each pick: Snag six offensive assets in the first eight picks. After that, anything goes.

1. I had no trouble sticking to my plan of grabbing six offensive players in the first eight picks, although I will concede that Anthony Rizzo (15 homers in 337 at-bats last year)—a supreme talent who has yet to accrue one full season in the bigs—was a mild reach. But then again, you can never have enough corner infielders with power.

2. When my rankings come out, Alex Rios will have a considerably higher number than 91. He's in his relative prime as a hitter...and it's hard to pass on a five-category talent (and 20-20 linchpin) in Round 8.

3. I may be one of Matt Cain's biggest (East Coast) supporters in fantasy...but by a slight margin, I'll take Madison Bumgarner's reasonable upside for 17 wins, 205 strikeouts, a sub-3.25 ERA and robust WHIP of 1.08. That aside, I'm sure Cain will be available in Round 6 of most March drafts.

4. I purposely blanked on catchers in the first 17 rounds. In leagues where only one backstop starts ... there's no motivation to take a middle-of-the-road asset above value. Just wait for Salvador Perez, Jonathan Lucroy, Travis d'Arnaud or even Brian McCann to drop on the board.

6. It's typically not my style to select five straight pitchers (four starters, one reliever) in the middle of a roto draft, but the quintet of Matt Moore (one of my top-20 hurlers), Aroldis Chapman (his June numbers as a closer were obscene), Fernando Rodney (anything between a 0.61 and 1.25 ERA will be appreciated), Josh Johnson and Jon Lester (value picks) has great intrigue.

If anything, the pitcher-heavy approach for Rounds 9-15 will apply more pressure to (again) unearth this year'sChase Headley and Mike Trout after Round 21.